Share this story

Apple's third-generation iPad includes decent camera hardware capable of shooting detailed, image-stabilized 1080p video. And its $5 iOS version of iMovie offers decent—if limited—editing capability. This leaves us wondering: can an iPad 3 be used as a complete portable HD production tool for families or other groups? We decided to find out, and were pleasantly surprised by the results. But while we think some users will be more than pleased with what they can achieve, we did discover some limitations along the way.

In order to gauge the iPad's suitability as a capture, editing, and publishing tool, we conceived, shot, and edited a 4-minute video which we then published to YouTube. We know dogs aren't always as Internet-lovable as cats, but my dog Dita volunteered to star in our experiment—a short docudrama about eating breakfast.

First, we'll repeat what we wrote in our third-generation iPad review when it comes to shooting 1080p video. The iPad 2 did fine while shooting 720p video, and the iPad 3's 1080p video is sharper but not necessarily better as far as dynamic range is concerned. The new iPad also has a significantly higher crop factor when shooting video. This was surprising, considering the lens on the iPad 3 is quite a bit wider than the lens on the iPad 2. However, the iPad crops a central area of its sensor to shoot video. A 1920x1080 pixel area is a pretty significant crop of its 5MP sensor, whereas the iPad 2 uses essentially a 720p sensor. It's not a deal-breaker by any stretch, but it's something to think about when trying to capture a wide scene.

Another improvement Apple added was digital image stabilization, similar to that on the iPhone 4S. In our test shot from a bouncy CTA bus, the effect is subtle but noticeable. It won't replace a good steadycam mount or tripod, but it does help smooth out rough motion. Still, video shot on the third-gen iPad is as good as on any smartphone, and the 1080p resolution and image stabilization are welcome improvements.

Lights, camera, action!

Over the course of two mornings, we gathered small clips of footage as Dita went about the business of eating her breakfast. That includes going downstairs, eating, going back upstairs to go out to the back yard for a bit, and coming back in for a treat. Usually this process tuckers out the poor pooch, so she often rests in the foyer after all the morning excitement.

Editing via iMovie is a pretty simple affair. Simply drag clips from the media viewer to the timeline, set start and end points, and tap to tweak the transition. You have a choice between straight cut, cross-dissolve, or "theme-based." iMovie has a handful of built-in themes, and each one offers its own transition. You can also set the transition time from 0.5 to 2 seconds, depending on the length of the clips (sometimes a two-second transition doesn't make sense), and fine-tune the transition in the timeline.

Selecting, arranging, and trimming clips is pretty straightforward in iMovie. Since this is the bulk of the work in editing video, iMovie has the basics covered.

We had a large number of similar clips, so it was a little difficult to be sure which clip was the right one when choosing what to insert in the timeline. Sometimes this meant a round-trip to the Photos app to scan through some of the clips, or to delete extraneous ones.

Once we had the clips arranged and settled on a simple cross-dissolve transition, we picked a song from our iTunes library to serve as a soundtrack. Dogs make some pretty disgusting noises when eating, so we decided to simply turn off the sound associated with each clip. It would be nice if there was a way to do this for all clips at once, but we couldn't find one while in the throes of editing.

UPDATE: An Apple spokesperson let us know that if you use the opposite workflow—add the background music first, then add clips to the timeline—each clip with automatically have its audio muted.

You can adjust the sound level of both clips and added music or sound effects with a simple slider, and a clever waveform view lets you know relative loudness as well as alerting you to the dangers of clipping and distortion.

After we picked out a song, we discovered it was just a bit shorter than our rough cut. It was fairly simple to go back and make some fine adjustments to some clips to get the overall length to match our chosen song ("Every Particle of the Atmosphere" by The Mercury Program).

iMovie includes some basic theme-based titles that look decent, but don't offer much flexibility.

Each theme in iMovie for iOS also has title options, but it appears that the title must be applied to an entire clip. We found this limiting, as we would have preferred to be able to at least adjust the time the title displayed within a clip. It may have been possible to create two clips from the same section of video to work around this, but we didn't see any way to easily cut a clip into two separate ones. Unfortunately, there aren't any options for making credits or more complicated titles.

Finally, we saved and exported the movie in 1080p. We had originally intended to upload directly from iMovie to YouTube, but got upload errors using "HD" and "Large (Recommended)" options. "Standard" resolution did finally upload successfully. We tried uploading the rendered 1080p version from the Photos app using its sharing options to no avail, either. Ultimately, we transferred the 1080p video to a desktop and uploaded from there without issue. We can't say what the exact problem was, as both our iPad and MacBook Air use the exact same Wi-Fi network connected to a rather speedy cable Internet connection.

We didn't have much luck using iMovie's built-in sharing options when trying to publish HD video to YouTube.

It's no Citizen Kane, but the finished movie should give you a rough idea of what you could expect from your own home movies:

Dita's Big Breakfast (Original in 1080p)

All-in-one solution

We think the iPad, despite its handling issues, makes a decent portable 1080p camera with a built-in editing suite. With its ability to shoot 1080p video and edit using iMovie without having to switch devices, the iPad 3 is effectively equivalent of the iPhone 4S in this regard. The iPhone 4S has two major advantages, though—it can fit in your pocket, and there is a wide variety of add-on lenses to expand your shooting options. But the iPad's 9.7" display has a huge advantage when composing shots and editing footage; the larger display looks better and is easier to manipulate for fine control.

We'd like to see iMovie for iOS expand its editing capabilities, including support for more titling and credit options, effects, and basic color and contrast controls. The similarly priced Avid Studio for iPad offers some of these features, but it still suffers from a number of performance issues. Other apps, such as MacPhun's Silent Movie Director offer a fun, Instagram-like take on video editing. You can make good finished videos, but desktop software still—unsurprisingly—offers more control and options.

Keep in mind that a dedicated camcorder is still going to offer some other major benefits, including a true optical zoom lens, a proper tripod mount, and typically better quality video sensors. The iPad is far from an ideal camera, but it does the job well enough that it may suit your particular needs. Especially if you don't see yourself toting around a camera bag full of video accessories.